27 Jan 2011

Easily Excited?

I got my ticket yesterday for Who Do You Think You Are 2011 (WDYTYA2011) and I’ve booked myself into three workshops and a slot with “Ask the Experts”...now I have to figure out what to ask them.

I attended last year, on the Sunday and had a brilliant time but I didn’t attend any of the workshops and I decided that next year I would do it properly! So this year I am. I’m going on the Friday (day off work yey!)

The workshops I’ve booked myself onto are:

TNA- Merchant Seamen sea service records with Janet Dempsey

I know that one of my PARRY ancestors was a Merchant Seaman and I haven’t the foggist where to start to look for information about his career. I’ve read the leaflets and been to some of the websites but I’m still confused about what I can and can’t access, what was actually recorded and what, if anything I can find out from these records.

Stuck in London? Resources at the Library of the Society of Genealogists and Elsewhere with Elsie Churchill

I work in London. I live in Kent. Yes I’m a commuter and it took me a year, yes a WHOLE YEAR to realise that the Hyde Park LDS Centre is on my way home from work. The bus I get has a stop at Exhibition Road. Now I know it’s there I try to get there as often as I can.

I know that the SOG is based in London, I have been on their website and have a fuzzy idea of where abouts they are but other than this I don’t know what resources they have or how they would be of use to me. So I’m going to this workshop to find out.

Manx ancestry – genealogical research in the Isle of Man with Colin Chapman

I’m really hoping that by attending this workshop I’ll get some pointers about where I go next with my George Rice Price OWENS (PARRY). He’s the sod that started the PARRY line then disappeared without a trace. He’s the sod that I wish I could hijack the TARDIS for. Well him and his son who left his pregnant wife in the Poor House. This workshop is for beginners so I should get lots of helpful tips and hints.

There’s quite a large gap between my booked “Ask the Expert” session and the final workshop so I may try to attend a few of the free workshops but I’ll more likely wander around the stall and spend my paycheck (the 25th is my pay day; this probably isn’t a good thing!). At some point I’ll have to eat too.

So that’s one of the things I got excited about this week.

The other is to do with my partner’s ancestry. The STEERS, not STEER or STEARS but STEERS. He very kindly gave me permission to run off and investigate his ancestry, I’m not sure if he was interested or just wanted some peace and quiet. Either way I’m doing it now. The family, at first glance at least on the PATERNAL side, appears to be firmly rooted in London, mainly (and rather oddly) in the East End; Hackney, Stepney and in the West; Islington mainly. However their origins appear to be in HULL. Unfortunately I can’t find any Birth or Baptism information on the gent from HULL, who lived in Islington and worked making “fancy mats” and as a carriage cleaner for GNR. It’s another infuriating brick wall. I also found a relation who was born in Rock Ferry, Cheshire; this makes him much happier because he’s a Liverpool fan and now uses that for legitimacy issues down the pub!

I’ll write more about the STEERS as I’ve had some happy discoveries thanks to ancestry’s digitalisation of the London Metropolitan Archives’ Parish Registers.